Page 111 of Slapshot Baby

I've been tracking these fragments since they started surfacing.

Ava's whiteboard at my apartment has a column where I track them every evening: what triggered it, what I saw, how clear it was on a scale of one to five.

She calls it my memory weather report.

The early ones came as dreams. A locker room celebration I didn't recognize. A conversation with my father at a kitchen table I couldn't place.

Then colors started dragging things forward. The exact shade of orange in a sunset triggered a team barbecue at the beach. The blue of Mira's car unlocked a drive to a restaurant I'd forgotten I loved.

Easton walks in toweling his hair, drops into his stall, and opens his phone. He's been cataloging the sessions.

"Your lateral movement looked better today," he says without glancing up. "You were compensating to your right last week. You've corrected it."

"Noticed that too."

"I sent you an analysis of your crossover speed compared to your pre-injury baseline. You're at ninety-four percent."

"What's the other six percent?"

"Confidence. The mechanics are there, but you're still checking yourself mid-stride."

"I'll work on it."

He nods and returns to his phone.

My phone buzzes in my stall with a text from the real estate agent:

Final walkthrough confirmed for 3 PM. Floors look great.

I flip the phone face down before anyone catches the screen. I've been coordinating this for weeks between sessions, squeezing in calls during cool-downs and texting contractors from parking lots while Ava thinks I'm answering team emails.

She told me once that floors are the first thing a designer notices when she walks into a room. That if the floors are wrong nothing else matters.

I filed it in a part of my brain for the right time.

Now is the right time.

Wyatt drops onto the bench across from me, still dripping with sweat, and picks up a story he’s been telling Theo since they stepped off the ice.

His hands move fast enough to flick water onto Jordan’s gear bag.

Jordan yanks it out of range. “Watch it, Larkin. Some of us own shit worth protecting.”

Wyatt doesn’t even pause.

“So the trainer tells the rookie, ‘Whatever you do, don’t let him tape your ankles.’ And the rookie goes, ‘Why not?’ And the trainer says, ‘Because last time he taped a guy’s ankles, the guy skated straight into the boards and said thank you.’”

Theo laughs into his protein bar.

Jordan snorts. “You’ve been waiting all practice to tell that shitty joke, haven’t you?”

I laugh.

The sound comes easily, bubbling out of my chest before I can stop it.

And then I do.

Because I’ve heard that joke before.